Commentary by Heather Cox Richardson
“None of this is complicated,” political data specialist Tom Bonier wrote yesterday about Tuesday’s dramatic Democratic victories around the country. “The [Republicans] ran on affordability in 2024. They gave sanctimonious lectures on cable news on election night about how the ‘silent working class majority’ had spoken. Then they governed as reckless authoritarians, punishing the working class.”
For nine months now, officials in the Trump administration have pushed their extremist policies with the insistence that his election gave him a mandate, although more people voted for someone other than Trump in 2024 than voted for him. Tuesday’s elections stripped away that veneer to reveal just how unpopular their policies really are.
Aside from the health of the country, this poses a dramatic political problem for the Republicans. The midterm elections are in slightly less than a year, and Tuesday’s vote, which suggests the 2024 MAGA coalition has crumbled, may spell bad news for the mid-decade gerrymandering Republicans have pushed in states they control, like Texas. Republican lawmakers created the new Republican-leaning districts by moving Republican voters into Democratic-leaning districts, thus weakening formerly safe Republican districts. That could backfire in a blue-wave election.
First thing Wednesday morning, on the day the government shutdown became the longest shutdown in history, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) wrote to President Donald J. Trump to “demand a bipartisan meeting of legislative leaders to end the [Republican] shutdown of the federal government and decisively address the Republican healthcare crisis.” They assured him that “Democrats stand ready to meet with you face to face, anytime and anyplace,” and concluded: “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
Trump had a different approach to Tuesday’s news. He met with Republican senators before the cameras and admitted that the shutdown had badly hurt the Republicans. But rather than moving to compromise—as all previous presidents have done to end shutdowns—he reiterated his crusade to make sure Democrats can never again hold power. He demanded that Republican senators end the filibuster and, as soon as they do, promptly end mail-in voting and require prohibitive voter ID. “If we do what I’m saying,” he told the senators, Democrats will “most likely never obtain power because we will have passed every single thing that you can imagine.”
Former Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) stopped Bloomberg News Senate reporter Steven Dennis in the hallway to say: “We’re not going to do that.”
Throughout the day, Trump continued to flood social media with more than 30 social media posts and choppy videos in which, standing in a dark room behind a podium and slurring his speech, he appeared to read from his social media posts, touting his accomplishments, railing against former president Barack Obama, threatening Nigeria with war, and pleading with Republican senators to end the filibuster.
Jenna Amatulli of The Guardian noted that “[t]he bizarre series of posts could raise further questions on Trump’s mental acuity.” More questions arose yesterday after Trump spoke before the America Business Forum saying: “For generations Miami has been a haven for those fleeing communist tyranny in South Africa. I mean, if you take a look at what’s going on in parts of South Africa. Look at South Africa, what’s going on. Look at South America, what’s going on. You know, I’m not going there. We have a G20 meeting in South Africa.”
Trump seems to be flailing in other ways, too. One takeaway from Tuesday’s vote was that Americans are frustrated at the rising costs of living and slowing job market, and Republicans are suddenly pivoting to claim they are good stewards of the economy. But it’s a hard sell.
One of Trump’s posts yesterday tried to make the point that the economy has improved under his guidance. He posted that “Walmart just announced that Prices for a Thanksgiving Dinner is [sic] now down 25% since under Sleepy/Crooked Joe Biden, in 2024. AFFORDABILITY is a Republican Stronghold. Hopefully, Republicans will use this irrefutable fact!”
But readers noted that Walmart’s 2024 Thanksgiving meal contained 21 items while the 2025 list includes only 15, and that most of the brand name items listed in the 2024 meal were replaced with Walmart brand items in 2025.
Yesterday the Supreme Court heard arguments concerning the legality of Trump’s tariff war, the centerpiece of his economic plan. Trump seemed to try to pressure the Supreme Court to save his tariffs, posting that the case before the court “is, literally, LIFE OR DEATH for our Country.”
But the Constitution gives power over tariffs to Congress alone. Three lower courts have found that Trump’s assumption of power to set tariffs through the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, which gives the president power to regulate international commerce after declaring an emergency in response to an external threat against the United States, is unconstitutional.
As Chris Geidner of Law Dork explained, the Supreme Court justices seemed inclined to agree with the lower courts that Trump’s tariffs are unconstitutional. Undermining Trump’s insistence that the tariffs are paid by foreign countries, in yesterday’s arguments the administration’s lawyer admitted that American consumers pay from 30% to 80% of the tariffs.
Today Trump disagreed and changed the justification for the tariffs to national security, ground on which he likely expects the Supreme Court to support him. “No, I don’t agree,” he told a reporter. “I think that they might be paying something, but when you take the overall impact, the Americans are gaining tremendously. They’re gaining through national security. Look, I’m ending war because of these tariffs. Americans would have to fight in some of these wars.”
Today brought more bad news for Americans living in Trump’s economy. A report today showed that in October, layoff announcements hit their highest level in more than 20 years. According to data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a private firm that collects data on workplace reductions, Abha Bhattarai of the Washington Post reported, U.S. employers have announced 1.1 million layoffs so far in 2025. That number rivals job cuts during the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced today that a shortage of air traffic controllers will force flight reductions at forty of the nation’s busiest airports starting tomorrow. This will affect both commercial and cargo traffic. Today airlines began to cancel hundreds of flights. The Federal Aviation Administration said that reductions will begin at 4% on Friday and go up until they hit 10% on November 14.
The administration is tripping in court over its immigration policies, as well.
On Monday, jury selection began in the trial of Sean Dunn, a former paralegal for the Department of Justice, charged with a misdemeanor for throwing a salami submarine sandwich “at point blank range” at a federal agent after a grand jury refused to authorize felony charges. As former federal prosecutor Joyce White Vance noted, prosecuting this case while dismissing others—like the issue of border czar Tom Homan allegedly accepting $50,000 to steer contracts toward a certain firm—diminishes the public’s confidence in the Justice Department. (continued on Page 2 or here)
